The other day, I read Gareth’s blog on the matter of accessibility as it relates to the “casual” gamer. He pointed out that veteran gamers have a tremendous advantage, simply by reason of being veterans.

He came to this realization while attempting to hook his lady friend Denbeigh on gaming. First they tried Worms3D. That was a bust. Then came The Incredibles, likewise a turkey.

From the descriptions, I gather that both those games had poorly-implemented interfaces, and I would have been frustrated by them, too.

Then Gareth put on Diablo II. That’s a straightforward fantasy shooter (or action/RPG if you insist), and really easy to get into – at least for us veterans. After picking a character and starting up, Gareth found himself spending ten minutes trying to explain D2 to her. I suspect he may have been trying to explain too much at once, but no matter. Diablo II went the way of the others.

Fortunately, Gareth achieved success at last with (ahem) The Sims. That’s when he started thinking seriously about accessibility and the “casual” gamers.

We who have been gaming for years have a large pool of experience on which to draw. We readily understand the interface, the mechanics, the numbers. While there may be differences from game to game, enough is similar that we can adjust easily to what is new.

The casual gamer has no such background. Thus, someone whose playing experience doesn’t go much beyond Bejeweled can find the typical RPG, with its mechanics, numbers, skills, combat features, etc., a bewildering and frustrating experience.

So Gareth isn’t too upset over the current industry emphasis on making games more “accessible” to others than the “hardcore” crowd. He expects that in time, the “casual” gamers will want more complexity from their games, and move up into more hardcore products.

I thought that might be a little over-optimistic. If people are satisfied with what they play now, why change? There’s such a variety of “casual” games today, with more coming all the time, along with the big companies getting into the act, too, that casuals will soon be swimming in a flood of products.

Then I read Coyote’s blog this morning.

Big Fish and NPD conducted a survey of 3,000 gamers of all types. The results were not what might be expected. The “hardcore” and “casual” gamers are closer than anyone thought. Indeed, the line between the two is blurred. I especially found the following quote rather startling:

The study showed that the â€œHeavy Actionâ€ gamer segment (young males that had a preference for shooters, racing, driving mayhem, fighting, realistic sports, and heavy role playing games) were also most likely to play games in the â€œNancy Drewâ€ segment (games typically preferred by older females such as match 3, brain teaser, mahjong, word, hidden object, jigsaw, trivia and puzzle adventure games).

Not only is that mindboggling to consider; it turns out that “casual” gamers spend as much or more time playing as hardcores do. And yes, that “casual” segment has been known to dabble in the hardcore area, too.

It seems that as time goes on, these two groups, supposedly disparate, draw closer together. That’s if they ever really were disparate to begin with. As the report mentions, it’s nonsensical to draw a line between those two.

Gareth feels that eventually we’ll all be “just gamers”; that moment may be much closer than many suspect. It may even be here now. I’d like that; we could, at the very least, dispense with those “hardcore” and “casual” descriptions. After all, if those guys playing GTA IV are also into mahjong, are they hardcore or casual? Neither, they’re just gamers.

we kricky, i finish playing a game or 2 of bejewled2 only to come online and see you blasting it as a casual game.

i think the companies would be better served in getting the casual gamer a SLOWER intro into the ‘heavy’ mechanics. GET them into the game now, and slowly build over a long haul the RPG mechanics/numbers ect. and let the ‘hardcore freeks’ start at the 1/4 mark or later

You could say that for anything though, veterans of a particular activity will outperform the newcomers. For instance imagine someone had never played a card game – you would have to explain card rankings, card suits, and various combinations such as full house or flush, where someone that had played before would pick it right up. A poorly designed interface or unfamiliar interface will add to the problem though. One of my son’s friends has racked up countless hours in Halo 1-3 and other console shooters, but put him in front of a PC playing Crisis or Counterstrike with a keyboard and he is completely lost without a console controller.

I have seen my wife many times play games for hours at a time. She would never touch an RPG or FPS, or other things that would be considered hardcore, but put Bejeweled or Hoyle’s Board Games or Card Games in front of her and she will rack up the play time that will rival the hardcore players.

I think the biggest problem with looking at hardcore vs casual is that our terminology is outdated. The two terms reflect the idea that there are two separate groups that don’t overlap. We keep seeing with these surveys, though, that people keep cutting cross-wise through the camps we have set up.

“If people are satisfied with what they play now, why change?” I saw there was an answer with Coyote’s new info, but here’s my take… I look at the pleasure of gaming as “Challenge me, but not too much.”* Given that, you have people who get to a certain level of challenge and find that it’s as hard as they will want to get. It’s a sweet spot of challenge/reward that pushes them just enough to make it enjoyable, but they don’t have to work so hard that they get frustrated.

Everyone eventually self-sorts on how hard they want their games to be, and what type they like playing. Some people can sustain that balance on reward/challenge with Match-3 games for years. Others are going to be dissatisfied with that in hours, and want to move on to something more intricate.

So… given a big group of people, you’re going to have lots of people preferring one type of game over another based on what they’ve been exposed to, what they feel themselves to be good at, and what frustrates them. And within each group there, you’ll have people who have found their comfort level and like to stick to it, and those that are still traversing the difficulty ladder.

To me, it makes the whole casual vs. hardcore way to simplistic to describe what we really have!

Sorry for the dissertation!

*I certainly didn’t come up with that, it’s the theory that makes the most sense to me.

Mac, yes, that is the point here: the two groups are much closer than previously thought, and the terminology is inadequate. The report brings that out quite clearly. Given the crossover we have now, there really isn’t so much a “hardcore” and “casual”, as multiple niches. Some are just larger than others.